New Unemployment Claims Fall/Jobs Rise

The number of Americans filing initial unemployment claims fell by 5000 to 326,000. The US economy created 2,000,000 new jobs in 2004.

Both statistics are provided by the US Labor Department.

Security Positions on the Rise

The current issue of CIO Magazine reports that security positions are expected to increase by 14% over the next few years.

Unemployment in New York State continues to drop

Unemployment beame lower in New York in November. For the second straight month joblessness in New York State was lower than in the nation as a whole.

The unemployment rate of 4.9 percent was down from 5.2 percent in October and significantly better than the 6.3 percent recorded in November 2003. Last month's jobless rate was the lowest since unemployment was recorded at 4.8 percent in July 2001.

December, 2004

People are still out of work. People are getting hired. The amount of time it is taking people who are out of work to land is decline for the recently unemployed.

Firms are back to hiring again. Almost every firm we call is in some version of ramp up AND given how deep the cuts were, wages will start an upward march next year. Let me give you a recent anecdote.

Recently, I represented a Perl programmer with strong financial industry experience who was earning $59000 in his last position. He had been working in Westchester and was looking north of the city and in NYC for a position. He received two job offers. Guess the salary?

Now a year ago, he would have been fotunate to get the same salary offered to him; two years ago, the question would have been how deep a salary cut.

Before you scroll down, take a guess.










He received two offers of $80000 plus bonus. One was close to home; the other in NYC. And the NYC company raised the offer to $85000!

Things are starting to change in the market. Get yourself to work because two years from now, it is going to be wild again!

Jeff Altman
Concepts in Staffing
jeffaltman@cisny.com